Completion involves creating passages from the formation though a liner or casing. The passages can be created by perforating guns but their use adversely affects the formation and can damage it to the point of reducing production.
Alternative ways to obtain access to the formation have been devised. One involves telescoping pistons that extend with pressure into the formation and take flow from the formation through a passage in the center of the piston that is available after the piston is extended. Such designs are discussed Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) Papers 94239, 94622 and 96660. While this technique is effective it has moving parts and many seals and extension of all the pistons is somewhat dependent on them all responding to applied pressure and extending at once before their central passage is blown clear by applied pressure.
Liners or casing have in the past been expanded after placement in a wellbore, as have screens. One example is U.S. Pat. No. 6,932,161. These tubulars that are intended to be expanded have been run in with centralizers that are compliant so as not to significantly increase the expansion force required. These centralizers have featured a series of ridges that are longitudinal, spiral or other patterns as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 6,725,939 and Application US 2003/0164236. Other applications of tubulars that are expanded can be seen in US 2005/0173130.
What is needed is a simpler design to allow tubular expansion to take place while providing access for production to come though while still leaving open the option to cement the expanded tubular. The present invention addresses this need by provision of openings on a tubular and surrounding the tubular with an outer sleeve that has ridges with openings on the ridges. Expansion of the tubular and/or the sleeve is contemplated. The sleeve openings align with the openings in the tubular and are forcibly positioned against the borehole wall to allow production through the aligned openings and cementing to go on among the ridges without fouling the openings. These and other features of the present invention will become more apparent to those skilled in the art from a review of the description of the preferred embodiment and the associated drawing while recognizing that the full scope of the invention can be found in the claims.